* or

Walter Benjamin, Nostalgia

BY FREDRIC JAMESON

So the melancholythat speaks fromthe pages of Benjamin's essays

- privatedepressions,professionaldiscouragement, the dejectionof
theoutsider,thedistressIn the faceof a politicaland historicalnight-
mare - searchesthe past foran adequate object, forsome emblem
or Image at which, as in religiousmeditation,the mind can stare
itselfout, into which it can dischargeits morbidhumorsand know
momentary, if only an esthetic,relief. It findsit: In the Germanyof
the thirtyyears war, in the Paris of the late nineteenthcentury
("Paris - the capitolof the nineteenthcentury").For theyare both
- the baroque and the modern- in theirveryessence allegorical,
and theymatchthe thoughtprocessof the theoristof allegory,which,
disembodiedintentionsearchingforsome externalobject in which to
takeshape, is itselfalreadyallegoricalavant la lettre.
Indeed, It seems to me that Walter Benjamin's thoughtis best
graspedas an allegoricalone, as a set of parallel,discontinuouslevels
of meditationwhichis notwithoutresemblanceto thatultimatemodel
of allegoricalcompositiondescribedby Dante in his letter to Can
Grande delia Scala, where he speaks of the fourdimensionsof his
♦ Walter
Benjamin was born in 1892 of a wealthy Jewishfamily in Berlin.
Unfitforservicein World War I, he studied for a time in Bern, and returningto
Berlin in 1920 triedunsuccessfullyto found a literaryreview there,beforeturning
to academic lifeas a career.His Orifins of German Tragedy was however refused
as a Ph.D. thesisat the Universityof Frankfurtin 1925. Meanwhile, he had begun
to translate Proust, and, under the influenceof Lukncs*History and Class Con-
sciousness,became a Marxist,visitingMoscow in 1926-27.After1933, he emigrated
to Paris and pursued work on his unfinishedproject Paris: Capitol of the Nine-
teenthCentury. He committedsuicide at the Spanish borderafteran unsuccessful
attemptto flee occupied France in 1940. He numbered among close friendsand
intellectualacquaintances, at various moments of his life, Ernst Bloch, Gershom
Scholem, T. W. Adorno, and Bert Brecht.
Everyfeelingis attached to an a prioriobject, and the
presentationof the latteris the phenomenologyof the former.
- Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels
Walter Benjamin,or Nostalgia 53
poem: the literal (his hero's earthlydestinies), the allegorical (the
fate of his soul), the moral (in which the encountersof the main
characterresumeone aspector anotherof the lifeof Christ), and the
anagogical (where the individualdrama of Dante foreshadowsthe
progressof the human race towardsthe Last Judgement)*.It will
not be hard to adapt this schemeto twentiethcenturyreality,if for
literalwe read simplypsychological,and forallegoricalethical; if for
the dominantarchetypalpatternof the life of Christ we substitute
some more modernone (and formyself,replacingreligionwith the
religionof art, thiswill be the cominginto being of the workof art
itself,the incarnationof meaningin Language); if finallywe replace
theologywith politics,and make of Dante's eschatologyan earthly
one, where the human race findsits salvation,not in eternity,but
in Historyitself.
Benjamin'sworkseems to me to be markedby a painfulstraining
towardsa wholenessor unityof experiencewhich the historicalsit-
uationthreatensto shatterat everyturn. Λ visionof a worldof ruins
and fragments, an ancientchaos of whatevernatureon the point of
overwhelmingconsciousness- these arc some of the images that
seem to recur,eitherin Benjamin himselfor in your own mind as
you read him. The idea of wholenessor of unity is of course not
originalwith him: how many modernphilosophershave described
the"damaged existence"we lead in modernsociety,the psychological
impairment of the divisionof labor and of specialization,the general
alienationand dchumanizationof modernlife and the specificforms
such alienation takes?Yet for the most part these analyses remain
abstract;and throughthemspeaks the resignationof the intellectual
specialistto his owti maimedprosrnt;the dream of wholeness,where
it persists,attachesitselfto someoneelse's future.Benjaminis unique
among these thinkersin that he wants to save his own life as well:
hence the peculiarfascinationof his writings,incomparablenot only
fortheirdialecticalintelligence, noreven forthe poeticsensibilitythey
express,but above all, perhaps,for the manner in which the auto-
biographicalpart of his mind findssymbolicsatisfactionin the shape
of ideas abstractly,in objectiveguises,expressed.
Psychologically,the drive towards unity takes the form of an
obsessionwiththepast and withmemory.Genuinememorydetermines
* It
is, at least, a more familiarand less intimidatingmodel than that proposed
by Benjamin himself,in a letterto Max Rychncr:"I have never been able to in-
quire and thinkotherwisethan, if I may so put it, in a theologicalsense - name!)
in conformitywith the Talmudic prescriptionregardingthe forty-ninelevels of
meaningin everypassage of the Torah."
54 FREDRIC JAMESON

"whetherthe Individualcan have a pictureof himself,whetherhe

can masterhis own experience." "Every passion borderson chaos,
but thepassionof thecollectorborderson thechaos of memory"(and
it was in the image of the collectorthat Benjamin foundone of his
mostcomfortableidentities)."Memoryforgesthe chain of tradition
that passes events on fromgenerationto generation."Strange re-
these- strangesubjectsof reflexion
flexions, fora Marxist(one thinks
of Sartre's acid commenton his orthodoxMarxist contemporaries:
"materialismis thesubjectivityof thosewho are ashamedof theirown
subjectivity").Yet Benjaminkeptfaithwith Proust,whom he trans-
lated,long afterhis own discoveryof communism;like Proustalso, he
saw in his favoritepoet Baudelairean analogous obsessionwith rem-
iniscenceand involuntary memory;and he followedhis literarymaster
in the fragmentary evocationof his own childhood called Berliner
Kindheitum 1900; he also began the task of recoveringhis own
existencewithshortessayisticsketches,recordsof dreams,of isolated
impressionsand experiences,which howeverhe was unable to carry
to the greaterwriter'sultimatenarrativeunity.
He was perhapsmoreconsciousof what preventsus fromassimilat-
ing our life experiencethan of the formsuch a perfectedlife would
take: fascinated,forexample,with Freud's distinctionbetween un-
consciousmemoryand theconsciousact of recollection, whichwas for
Freud basicallya way of destroyingor eradicatingwhat the former
was designed to preserve:"consciousnessappears in the systemof
perceptionin place of the memorytraces. . . consciousnessand the
leavingbehindof a memorytraceare withinthesame systemmutually
incompatible."For Freud,the functionof consciousnessis the defense
of theorganismagainstshocksfromthe externalenvironment:in this
sense traumas,hystericalrepetitions,dreams,are ways in which the
incompletely assimilatedshock attemptsto make its way throughto
consciousnessand hence to ultimate appeasement In Benjamin's
hands, this idea becomes an instrumentof historicaldescription,a
way of showinghow in modernsociety,perhaps on account of the
increasingquantityof shocksof all kinds to which the organismis
henceforth subjected,thesedefensemechanismsare no longerpersonal
ones: a whole series of mechanicalsubstitutesintervenesbetween
consciousnessand its objects shieldingus perhaps,yet at the same
timedeprivingus of any way of assimilatingwhat happens to us or
to any genuinelypersonalexperience.Thus, to giveonlyone example,
the newspaperstands as a shock-absorber of novelty,numbingus to
what mightperhapsotherwiseoverwhelmus, but at the same time
Walter Benjamin,or Nostalgia 55
renderingits eventsneutraland impersonal,makingof themwhat by
definitionhas no commondenominatorwith our privateexistences.
Experienceis moreoversociallyconditionedin that it depends on
a certainrhythmof recurrences on certaincategories
and similarities,
of likenessin eventswhich are properlyculturalin origin. Thus even
in Proustand Baudelaire,who lived in relativelyfragmented societies,
ritualisticdevices,oftenunconscious,are primaryelementsin the con-
structionof form:we recognizethemin the "vie antérieure"and the
correspondencesof Baudelaire, in the ceremoniesof salon life in
Proust. And where the modernwritertries to create a perpetual
present- as in Kafka- the mystery inherentin the eventsseems to
resultnot so much fromtheirnoveltyas fromthe feelingthat they
have merelybeen forgotten, that they are in some sense "familiar,"
in the hauntingsignificance which Baudelaire lent that word. Yet as
societyincreasinglydecays,such rhythmsof experienceare less and
less available.
At thispoint,however,psychologicaldescriptionseems to pass over
insensiblyinto moral judgement,into a vision of the reconciliation
of past and presentwhich is somehowan ethical one. But for the
westernreader the whole ethical dimensionof Benjamin's work is
likely to be perplexing,incorporatingas it docs a kind of ethical
psychologywhich, codifiedby Goethe, has become traditionalin
Germanyand deeplyrootedin the German language, but forwhich
we have no equivalent. This Lehensweisheitis indeed a kindof half-
way house betweenthe classical idea of a fixedhuman nature,with
its psychologyof the humors,passions,sins or charactertypes; and
the modernidea of pure historicity, of the determininginfluenceof
the situationor environment.As a compromisein the domain of the
individualpersonality,it is not unlike the compromiseof Hegel in
therealmof historyitself:and whereforthe lattera generalmeaning
was immanentto the particularmomentof history,for Goethe in
some sense the overall goal of the personalityand of its development
is built into the particularemotionin question,or latentin the par-
ticularstage in the individual'sgrowth.For the systemis based on a
visionof the fulldevelopmentof the personality(a writerlike Gide,
deeplyinfluenced' reflexion
by Goethe,givesbut a pale and narcissistic
ofthisethic,whichexpressedmiddleclass individualismat themoment
of its historictriumph); it neitheraims to bend the personalityto
some purelyexternalstandardof discipline,as is the case with Chris-
tianity,nor to abandon it to the meaninglessaccidentsof empirical
psychology,as is the case with most modernethics,but rathersees
56 FREDRIC JAMESON
the individualpsychologicalexperienceas somethingwhich includes
withinitselfseedsof development, somethingin whichethicalgrowth
is inherentas a kindof interiorized Providence.So, forexample,the
closinglines of Wilhelm Meister:"You make me thinkof Saul, the
son of Kish, who went forthto seek his father'sasses and found,
instead,a kingdom!"
It is howevercharacteristic of Benjamin that in his mostcomplete
expressionof thisGoetheanethic,the long essayon ElectiveAffinities,
he should lay morestresson the dangersthat menace the personality
thanon the pictureof its ultimatedevelopment.For thisessay,which
speaks the languageof Goetheanlife-psychology, is at the same time
a critiqueof the reactionaryforcesin German societywhich made
thispsychologytheirown: workingwith the conceptof myth,it is at
the same time an attackon the obscurantistideologieswhich made
the notionof myththeirrallyingcry. In this,the polemicpostureof
Benjamincan be instructive for all those of us who, undialectically,
are temptedsimply to reject the concept of myth altogether,on
accountof the ideologicaluses to whichit is ordinarilyput; forwhom
thisconcept,like relatedones of magicor charisma,seems not to aim
at a rationalanalysisof the irrationalbut ratherat a consecrationof
it throughlanguage.
But forBenjaminElectiveAffinities may be considereda mythical
work,on condition we understand mythns that elementfromwhich
theworkseeksto free itself: as some earlierchaos of instinctualforces,
inchoate,natural,pre-individualistic, as that which is destructiveof
genuine individuality, that which consciousness must overcomeif it
is to attain any real autonomy of its own, if it is to accede to any
properlyhuman level of existence. Is it far-fetched to see in this
oppositionbetweenmythicalforces and the individual spirita dis-
guisedexpressionof Benjamin'sthoughts about past and present,an
image of the way in which a remembering consciousness mastersits
past and bringsto lightwhatwould otherwise be lost in the prehistory
of the organism?Nor should we forgetthat the essay on Elective
Affinities is itselfa way of recoveringthe past, this time a cultural
past, one given over to the dark mythicalforcesof a proto-fascist
tradition.
Benjamin's dialecticalskill can be seen in the way this idea of
mythis expressedthroughattentionto the formof Goethe's novel,
no doubtone of the mosteccentricof Westernliterature,in its com-
binationof an eighteenthcenturyceremoniousness with symbolsof
a strangelyartificial, allegoricalquality: objectswhich appear in the
Walter Benjamin,or Nostalgia 57
blankncssof the non-visualnarrativestyleas thoughisolatedagainst
a void, as though fatefulwith a kind of geometricalmeaning -
cautiouslyselecteddetail of landscape, too symmetrical not to have
significance, analogies,such as the chemicalone that gives the novel
its title,too amply developed not to be emblematic.The reader is
of course familiarwith symbolismeverywherein the modernnovel;
but in general the symbolismis built into the work,like a sheet of
instructionssupplied inside the box along with the puzzle pieces.
Here we feelthe burdenof guiltlaid upon us as readers,that we lack
what strikesus almost as a culturallyinheritedmode of thinking,
accessibleonlyto thosewho are thatculture'smembers:and no doubt
the Goethean systemdoes project itselfin some such way, in its
claim to universality.
The originalityof Benjamin is to cut across the sterileopposition
betweenthe arbitraryinterpretations of the symbolon the one hand,
and the blank failureto see what it means on the other: Elective
Affinities is to be read, not as a novel by a symbolicwriter,but as a
novelabout symbolism.If objectsof a symbolicnatureloom large in
thiswork,it is not because theywerechosento underlinethe themeof
adulteryin some decorativemanner,but ratherbecause the real un-
derlyingsubject is preciselythe surrenderover into the power of
symbolsof people who have lost theirautonomyas human beings.
"When people sink to this level, even the life of apparentlylifeless
thingsgrowsstrong.Gundolfquite rightlyunderlinedthe crucialrole
ofobjectsin thisstory.Yet the intrusionof the thing-likeintohuman
lifeis preciselya criterionof the mythicaluniverse."We are required
to read these symbolicobjects to the second power: not so much
directlyto deciphera one-to-onemeaningfromthem,as to sense that
of which the veryfactof symbolismis itselfsymptomatic.
And as with the objects,so also with the characters: it has for
exampleoftenbeen remarkedthat the figureof Ottilie, the rather
saintlyyoung woman around whom the drama turns,is somehow
different in its mode of characterizationfromthe other,more real-
isticallyand psychologically drawncharacters.For Benjaminhowever
thisis not so much a flaw,or an inconsistency, as a clue: Ottilie is
not realitybut appearance,and it is this which the ratherexternal
and visual mode of characterization conveys. "It is clear that these
Goetheancharacterscome beforeus not so much as figuresshaped
fromexternalmodels,nor wholly Imaginaryin theirinvention,but
ratherentrancedsomehow,as thoughunder a spell. Hence a kind
58 FREDWTCJAMESON
of obscurityabout them which is foreignto the purely visual, to
paintingforinstance,and which is characteristic only of that whose
veryessence is pure appearance. For appearance is in this worknot
so muchpresentedas a themeas it is ratherimplicitin theverynature
and modeof the presentation itself."
This moral dimensionof Benjamin's,work, like Goethe's own,
clearlyrepresentsan uneasybalance, a transitionalmomentbetween
the psychologicalon the one hand, and the estheticor the historical
on the other. The mind cannot long be satisfiedwith this purely
ethicaldescription of the eventsof the book as the triumphof fateful,
mythical forces;it strains forhistoricaland social explanation,and at
length Benjamin himself is forcedto expressthe conclusion "that
the writershroudsin silence: namely,thatpassionloses all its rights,
under the laws of genuinehuman morality,when it seeks to make
a pact with wealthymiddle-classsecurity."But in Benjamin'swork,
this inevitableslippageof moralityinto historyand politics,charac-
teristicof all modernthought,is mediated by esthetics,is revealed
by attentionto the qualities of the work of art, just as the above
conclusionwas articulatedby the analysisof thoseaspectsof Elective
Affinities that mightbest have been describedas allegoricalrather
than symbolic.
For in one sense Benjamin'slifeworkcan be seen as a kindof vast
museum,a passionatecollection,of all shapes and varietiesof allegor-
ical objects;and his mostsubstantialworkcenterson that enormous
studioof allegoricaldecorationwhich is the Baroque.
The Origins- not so muchof German tragedy("Tragödie) - as
of German Trauerspiel: the distinction,for which English has no
equivalent,is crucial to Benjamin's interpretation.For "tragedy,"
which he limitsto ancientGreece as a phenomenon,is a sacrificial
drama in which the hero is offeredup to the Gods for atonement.
Trauerspiet,on the otherhand, which encompassesthe baroque gen-
erally,Elizabethansand Calderonas well as the 17thcenturyGerman
playwrights, is somethingthat mightbest be initiallycharacterized
as a pageant: a funerealpageant - so might the word be most
adequatelyrendered.
As a formit reflectsthe baroque vision of historyas chronicle,as
the relentlessturningof the wheel of fortune,a ceaseless succession
across the stage of the world's mighty,princes,popes, empressesin
theirsplendidcostumes,courtiers,maskeradersand poisoners,- a
dance of death producedwithall the fineryof a Renaissancetriumph.
For chronicleis not yethistoricity in the modernsense: "No matter
Walter Benjamin,or Nostalgia 59
how deeply the baroque intentionpenetratesthe detail of history,
its microscopicanalysis never ceases to search painstakinglyfor
political calculation in a substanceseen as pure intrigue. Baroque
drama knowshistoricaleventsonly as the depravedactivityof con-
spirators.Not a breathof genuinerevolutionary convictionin any of
thecountlessrebelswho appear beforethe baroque sovereign,himself
immobilizedin the postureof a Christianmartyr.Discontent- such
is the classic motiveforaction." And such historicaltime,mere suc-
cessionwithoutdevelopment,is in realitysecretlyspatial, and takes
the court (and the stage) as its privilegedspatial embodiment.
At firstglance, it would appear that this visionof life as chronicle
is in The Originsof GermanTragedy,a pre-Marxistwork,accounted
forin an idealisticmanner: as Lutherans,Benjaminsays,theGerman
baroqueplaywrights knewa worldin whichbeliefwas utterlyseparate
fromworks,in which not even the Calvinisticpreordainedharmony
intervenesto restorea littlemeaningto the successionof emptyacts
thatmake up human life,theworldthusremainingas a bodywithout
a soul, as the shell of an object divestedof any visiblefunction.Yet
it is at least ambiguouswhetherthis intellectualand metaphysical
positioncauses the psychologicalexperiencethat is at the heart of
baroque tragedy,or whetherit is not itselfmerelyone of the various
expressions, relativelyabstract,throughwhich an acute and concrete
emotiontriesto manifestitself.For the keyto the latteris the central
enigmaticfigureof the prince himself,halfway between a tyrant
justly assassinatedand a martyrsufferinghis passion: interpreted
allegorically, he standsas theembodiment of Melancholyin a stricken
world,and Hamlet is his mostcompleteexpression.This interpreta-
tion of the funerealpageant as a basic expressionof pathological
melancholyhas the advantageof accountingboth forformand con-
tentat the same time.
Contentin thesenseof thecharacters'motivations:"The indecision
of the princeis nothingbut saturnineacedia. The influenceof Saturn
makespeople 'apathetic,indecisive,slow.*7hc tyrantfallson account
of thesluggishness of his emotions.In the same fashion,the character
of the courtieris markedby faithlessness - anothertraitof the pre-
dominance of Saturn. The courtier 's mind, as portrayedin these
tragedies,is fluctuationitself:betrayalis his veryclement. It is to be
attributedneitherto hastinessof compositionnor to insufficient char-
acterization that in
the parasites these plays scarcely need any time
forreflection at all beforebetrayingtheirlordsand goingover to the
enemy. Rather,the lack of characterevidentin theiractions,partly
60 FREDRIC JAMESON

consciousMachiavellianismto be sure, reflectsan inconsolable,des-

pondentsurrenderto an impenetrable conjunctionof balefulconstel-
lations,a conjunctionthatseems to have takenon a massive,almost
thing-likecharacter.Crown,royal purple,scepter,all are in the last
analysis the propertiesof the tragedyof fate,and they carryabout
theman aura of destinyto which the courtieris the firstto submit
as to some portentof disaster. His faithlessnessto his fellow men
correspondsto the deeper,more contemplativefaith he keeps with
thesematerialemblems."
Once again Benjamin'ssensitivityis for those momentsin which
human beings findthemselvesgiven over into the power of things;
and thefamiliarcontentof baroquetragedy- thatmelancholywhich
we recognizefromHamlet- thosevicesofmelancholy- lust,treason,
sadism- so predominantin the lesserElizabethans,in Websterfor
Instance- veersabout slowlyinto a questionof form,into the prob-
lem of objects,which is to say of allegoryitself.For allegoryis pre-
ciselythe dominantmode of expressionof a world in which things
have been forwhateverreasonutterlysunderedfrommeanings,from
spirit,fromgenuinehuman existence.
And in the lightof thisnew examinationof the baroque fromthe
pointof viewof formratherthanof content,littleby littlethe brood-
ing melancholyfigureat thecenterof the play himselfaltersin focus,
the hero of the funerealpageant littleby littlebecomestransformed
into the baroque playwrighthimself,the allcgoristpar excellence,in
Benjamin'sterminology the Grübler:thatsuperstitious, overparticular
readerof omenswho returnsIn a morenervous,modernguise In the
hystericalheroesof Poe and Baudelaire. "Allegoriesare in the realm
of thoughtswhat ruinsare in the realmof things";and it is clear that
Benjamin is himselffirstand foremostamong these depressedand
hyperconscious visionarieswho people his pages. "Once the object
has beneaththe broodinglook of Melancholybecomeallegorical,once
life hps flowedout of it, the object itselfremainsbehind,dead, yet
preservedfor all eternity;it lies beforethe allegorist,given over to
him utterly, forgood or ill. In otherwords,the objectitselfis hence-
forthincapable of projectingany meaning on its own; it can only
takeon thatmeaningwhichtheallegoristwishesto lend it. He instills
it with his own meaning,himselfdescends to inhabit it: and this
mustbe understoodnot psychologically but in an ontologicalsense.
In his hands the thingin question becomes somethingelse, speaks
of somethingelse, becomesforhim the key to some realm of hidden
Walter Benjamin,or Nostalgia 61
knowledge,as whose emblemhe honorsit. This is what constitutes
the natureof allegoryas script."
Scriptratherthan language,the letterratherthan the spirit;into
this the baroque worldshatters,strangelylegible signs and emblems
naggingat the too curious mind,a processionmovingslowly across
a stage,laden withoccultsignificance.In thissense,forthe firsttime
it seems to me that allegoryis restoredto us - not as a gothicmon-
strosityof purelyhistoricalinterest,nor as in C. S. Lewis a sign of
the medievalhealthof the (religious) spirit,but ratheras a pathology
withwhichin the modernworldwe are only too familiar.The tend-
ency of our own criticismhas been to exalt symbolat the expenseof
allegory(even thoughthe privilegedobjectsproposedby thatcriticism
- Englishmannerismand Dante - are moreproperlyallegoricalin
nature; in this,as in other aspectsof his sensibility,Benjamin has
much in commonwith a writerlike T. S. Eliot). It is, perhaps,the
expressionof a value rather than a descriptionof existingpoetic
phenomena: forthe distinctionbetweensymboland allegoryis that
between a completereconciliationbetween object nnd spiritand a
mere will to such reconciliation.The usefulnessof Benjamin's an-
alysislies howeverin his insistenceon a temporaldistinctionas well:
the symbol is the instantaneous,the lyrical,the single momentin
time; and this temporallimitationexpressosperhnpsthe historical
impossibility in the modernworld forgenuine reconciliationto last
in time,to be anythingmorethnna lyricnl, accidentalpresent.Allegory
is on the contrarythe privilegedmode of our own life in time, a
clumsydecipheringof meaningfrommomentto moment,the painful
attemptto restorea continuityto heterogeneous, disconnectedinstants.
"Where thesymbolas it fadesshowsthe faceof Nature in the lightof
salvation,in allegoryit is the fades hippocraticaof historythat lies
like a frozenlandscape beforethe eye of the beholder.History in
everythingthat it has of unseasonable,painful,abortive,expresses
itselfin that face - nay ratherin thatdeath's head. And as true as
it may be that such an allegoricalmode is utterlylacking in any
'symbolic'freedomof expression,in any classical harmonyof feature,
in anythinghuman- what is expressedhereportentously in the form
of a riddle is not only the natureof human life in general,but also
the biographicalhistoricity of the individualin its mostnatural and
organicallycorrupted form. This - the baroque, enrthboundexpo-
sitionof historyas the storyof the world's suffering - is the very
essence of allegoricalperception;historytakes on meaning only in
the stationsof its agony and decay. The amount of meaning is in
62 FREDRIC JAMESON
exact proportionto the presenceof death and the power of decay,
since death is that which tracesthe surestline betweenPhysis and
meaning."
And what marksbaroque allegoryholds forthe allegoryof modern
times,for Baudelaire as well: only in the latter it is interiorized:
"Baroque allegorysaw the corpse fromthe outside only. Baudelaire
sees it fromwithin."Or again: "Commemoration[Andenken] is the
secularizedversionof the adorationof holyrelics. . . Commemoration
is the complementto experience.In commemoration therefindsex-
pressionthe increasingalienationof human beings,who take inven-
toriesoftheirpastas of lifelessmerchandise.In the nineteenth century
allegoryabandonstheoutsideworld,only to colonizethe inner.Relics
come fromthe corpse,commemoration fromthe dead occurrencesof
thepast whichare euphemistically knownas experience."
Yet in theselate essayson modernliteraturea new preoccupation
appears,which signals the passage in Benjamin fromthe predomin-
antlyestheticto the historicaland politicaldimensionitself.This is
the attentionto machines,to mechanicalinventions, whichcharacter-
isticallyfirst
appears in the realm of esthetics itselfin the studyof
the movies ("The ReproduceableWork of Art") and only later is
extendedto the studyof historyin general(as in the essay "Paris -
Capitol of the 19th Century,"in which the feelingof life in this
periodis conveyedby a descriptionof the new objectsand inventions
ofit- thepassageways,theuse ofcast iron,theDaguer-
characteristic
rotype and the panorama,the expositions,advertising).It is import-
ant to pointout thathowevermaterialistic such an approachto history
may seem,nothing is fartherfrom Marxism than the stresson inven-
tion and techniqueas the primarycause of historicalchnnge. Indeed
it seems to me that such theories(of the kind forwhich the steam
engineis thecause of theindustrialrevolution, and whichhave recent-
ly been rehearsedyet again, in streamlined modernistic formin the
worksof Marshall McLuhan) function a as substitute for Marxist
historiography in the way in which theyoffer feeling concrete-
a of
ness comparableto economicsubject matter,at the same time that
theydispensewith any considérationof the human factorsof classes
and of the socinlorganizationof production.
Benjamin'sfascinationwith the role of inventionsin historyseems
to me mostcomprehensible in psychologicalor estheticterms. If we
follow,forinstance,his meditationon the role of the passerbyand
the crowd in Baudelaire,we find that afterthe evocationof Baud-
elaire's physicaland stylisticcharacteristics,after the discussionof
Walter Benjamin,or Nostalgia 63
shock and organicdefensesoutlinedearlierin this essay, the inner
logic of Benjamin'smaterialleads him to materialinvention:"Com-
fortisolates. And at the same timeit shiftsits possessorcloserto the
powerof physicalmechanisms.With theinventionof matchesaround
the middle of the century,therebegins a. whole series of novelties
which have this in commonthat they replace a complicatedset of
operationswith a single strokeof the hand. This developmentgoes
on in many different spheresat the same time: it is evidentamong
othersin the telephone,where in place of the continuousmovement
with which the crank of the older model had to be turneda single
liftingof the receivernow suffices.Amongthe variouselaborateges-
turesrequiredto preparethe photographicapparatus,that of 'snap-
ping1 the photographwas particularlyconsequential.Pressing the
fingeronce is enough to freezean eventforunlimitedtime.The ap-
paratuslendsthe instanta posthumousshock,so to speak. And beside
tactileexperiencesof this kind we findoptical ones as well, such as
the classifiedads in a newspaper,or the trafficin a big city.To move
throughthe latterinvolvesa whole seriesof shocksand collisions.At
dangerousintersections, impulsescrisscrossthe pedestrianlike charges
in a battery.Baudelairedescribestheman who plungesintothecrowd
as a reservoirof electricalenergy. Thereupon he calls him, thus
singlingout the experienceof shock,'a kaléidoscopeendowed with
consciousness'/1And Benjamin goes on to complete this catalogue
with a descriptionof the workerand his psychologicalsubjectionto
the operationof the machinein the factory.Yet it seems to me that
alongsidethe value of thispassage as an analysisof the psychological
effectof machinery,it has for Benjamin a secondaryintention,it
satisfiesa deeper psychologicalrequirementperhaps in some ways
even more importantthan the officialintellectualone; and that is to
serve as a concreteembodimentforthe state of mind of Baudelaire.
The essay indeed beginswith a relativelydisembodiedpsychological
state: the poet facedwith the new conditionof language in modern
times,facedwiththe debasementof journalism,the inhabitantof the
greatcityfacedwith the increasingshocksand perceptualnumbness
of daily life. These phenomenaarc intenselyfamiliarto Benjamin,
but somehowhe seems to feel themas insufficiently "rendered11:he
cannot possess themspiritually,he cannot express them adequately,
until he findssome sharper and more concretephysical image in
which to embodythem. The machine,the list of inventions,is pre-
ciselysuch an image; and it will be clear to the readerthat we con-
sidersuch a passage,in appearancea historicalanalysis,as in reality
64 i FREDRÎC JAMESON

artexercisein allegoricalméditation,in the locatingof some fitting

emblemin whichto anchorthe peculiarand nervousmodernstate of
mindwhichwas his subject-matter.
For this reason the preoccupationwith machines and inventions
in Benjamindoes not lead to a theoryof historicalcausality;rather
it findsits completionelsewhere,in a theoryof the modernobject,
in the notionof "aura." Aura forBenjamin is the equivalentin the
modernworld,whereit still persists,forwhat anthropologists call the
"sacred" in primitivesocieties; it is in the world of things what
"mystery"is in the world of human events,what "charisma" is in
the world of human beings. In a secularizeduniverseit is perhaps
easierto locateat themomentof itsdisappearance,the cause of which
is in generaltechnicalinvention,thereplacement of human perception
with those substitutesfor and mechanical extensionsof perception
which are machines. Thus it is easy to see how in the movies,in
the "reproduceableworkof art," that aura which originallyresulted
fromthe physical presenceof actors in the here-and-nowof the
theateris short-circuited by the new technicaladvance (and then
in
replaced, genuine Freudian symptom-formation, by the attemptto
endow the starswith a new kind of personalaura of theirown off
thescreen).
Yet in theworldofobjects,thisintensity of physicalpresencewhich
constitutesthe aura of somethingcan perhaps best be expressedby
the image of the look, the intelligencereturned:"The experienceof
aura is based on the transposition of a social reactiononto the rela-
tionshipof the lifelessor of nature to man. The personwe look at,
the personwho believeshimselflooked at, looks back at us in return.
To experiencethe aura of a phenomenonmeans to endow it with the
powerto look back in return."
And elsewherehe definesaura thus: "The single, unrepeatable
experienceof distance,no matterhow close it may be. While resting
on a summerafternoon, to followthe outlineof a mountainagainst
thehorizon,or of a branchthatcastsitsshadow on the viewer,means
to breaththe aura of the mountain,of the branch." Aura is thus in
a sense theoppositeof allegoricalperception,in thatin it a mysterious
wholenessofobjectsbecomesvisible. And wherethebrokenfragments
of allegoryrepresenteda thing-worldof destructiveforcesin which
human autonomywas drowned,the objectsof aura representperhaps
the settingof a kind of utopia, a Utopianpresent,not shorn of the
past but having absorbedit, a kind of plenitudeof existencein the
worldof things,ifonlyforthe briefestinstant.Yet thisUtopiancom-
Walter Benjamin,or Nostalgia 65
portentof Benjamin'sthought,put to flightas it is by the mechanized
presentof history,is available to the thinkeronly in a simplercultural
past.
Thus it is his one evocationof a non-allegoricalart, his essay on
Nikolai Leskow,"The Teller of Tales," which is perhapshis master-
piece. As with actorsfacedwith the technicaladvance of the repro-
duceable art-work,so also with the tale in the face of moderncom-
municationssystems, and in particularof thenewspaper.The function
of the newspapersis to absorbthe shocksof novelty,and by numbing
the organismto them to sap their intensity.Yet the tale, always
constructedaround some novelty,was designed on the contraryto
preserveits force;wherethe mechanicalform"exhausts"ever increas-
ing quantitiesof new material,the older word-of-mouth communica-
tion is that whichrecommendsitselfto memory.Its reproduceability
is not mechanical,but natural to consciousness;indeed, that which
allows the storyto be remembered,to seem "memorable"is at the
same timethe means of its assimilationto the personalexperienceof
the listenersas well.
It is instructiveto compare this analysis by Benjamin of the tale
(and its implieddistinctionfromthe novel) with that of Sartre,so
similarin some ways, and yet so different in its ultimateemphasis.
For both,the two formsarc opposednot only in theirsocial origins-
the tale springingfromcollectivelife,the novel fromsolitude- and
not only in theirraw material- the talc using what everyonecan
recognizeas commonexperience,the novel that which is uncommon
and highlyindividualistic - but also and primarily in therelationship
to death and to eternity.Benjamin quotes Valéry: "It is almost as
thoughthe disappearanceof the idea of eternitywere relatedto the
increasingdistastefor any kind of work of long durationin time."
Concurrentwith the disappearanceof the genuine storyis the in-
creasingconcealmentof death and dyingin our society:forthe au-
thorityof the storyultimatelyderivesfromthe authorityof death,
whichlends everyeventa once-and-for-alluniqueness. "A man who
died at the age of thirty-five is at everypoint in his life a man who
is going to die at the age of thirty-five": so Benjamin describesour
apprehensionof charactersin the tale, as the anti-psychological, the
simplifiedrepresentatives of theirown destinies. But what appeals
to his sensitivityto the archaic is preciselywhat Sartrecondemnsas
inauthentic:namelythe violenceto genuinelived human experience,
which neverin the freedomof its own presentfeelsitselfas fate,for
which fate and destinyare always characteristicof other people's
66 FREDRÎC JAMESON

experience,seen fromthe outsideas somethingclosed and thing-like.

For thisreasonSartreopposesthetale (it is truethathe is thinkingof
the late-nineteenthcenturywell-made story,which catered to a
middle-classaudience,ratherthan to the relativelyanonymousfolk
productof which Benjaminspeaks) to the novel, whose task is pre-
ciselyto renderthisopen experienceof consciousnessin the present,
of freedom,ratherthan the optical illusionof fate.
There can be no doubt that this oppositioncorrespondsto a his-
torical experience: the older tale, indeed the classical nineteenth
centurynovel as well, expresseda social life in which the individual
facedsingle-shot,irreparablechances and opportunities, in which he
had to play everything on a single roll of the dice, in which his life
did therefore properlytendto takeon theappearanceof fateor destiny,
of a storythatcan be told. Whereas in the modernworld (which is
to say,in WesternEuropeand theUnitedStates), economicprosperity
is such thatnothingis everreallyirrevocablein thissense: hence the
philosophyof freedom,hence the modernisticliteratureof conscious-
ness of whichSartreis here a theorist:hence also, the decay of plot,
forwhere nothingis irrevocable(in the absence of death in Ben-
jamin's sense) thereis no storyto tell either,thereis only a seriesof
experiencesof equal weightwhose orderis indiscriminately reversible.
Benjaminis as aware as Sartre of the way in which the tale, with
its appearanceof destiny,does violence to our lived experiencein the
present: but for him it does justice to our experienceof the past.
Its "inauthenticity" is to be seen as a mode of commemoration, so
that it does not really matterany longer whether the young man
dead in his primewas aware of his own lived experienceas fate:
forus, henceforth remembering him,we always thinkof him, at the
variousstages of his life,as one about to become this destiny,and
"
the tale thusgivesus thehope of warmingour own chillyexistence
upon a death about whichwe read."
The tale is not only a psychologicalmode of relatingto the past,
of commemorating it: it is forBenjaminalso a mode of contactwith
a vanishedformof social and historicalexistenceas well; and it is
in this correlationbetween the activityof story-tellingand the
concreteformof a certainhistorically determinate mode of production
that Benjamin can serve as a model of Marxistliterarycriticismat
its mostrevealing.The twinsourcesof story-telling findtheirarchaic
embodimentin "the settledcultivatoron the one hand and the sea-
faringmerchanton the other. Both formsof life have in fact pro-
duced theirown characteristic typeof story-teller ... A genuineex-
Walter Benjamin,or Nostalgia 67
tensionof thepossibilities ofstory-tellingto itsgreatesthistoricalrange
is howevernot possiblewithoutthemostthorough-going fusionof the
two archaictypes. Such a fusionwas realizedduringthe middleages
in the artisanalassociationsand guilds. The sedentarymasterand the
wanderingapprenticesworked togetherin the same room; indeed,
everymasterhad himselfbeen a wanderingapprenticebeforesettling
down at home or in some foreigncity. If peasants and sailors were
the inventorsof story-telling, the guild systemprovedto be the place
of itshighestdevelopment."The tale is thusthe productof an artisan
culture,a hand-madeproduct,like a cobbler'sshoe or a pot; and like
such a hand-made object,"the touch of the story-teller clings to it
like the traceof the potter'shand on the glazed surface."
In his ultimatestatementof the relationshipof literatureto politics,
Benjaminseems to have triedto bringto bear on the problemsof the
presentthis method,which had known success in dealing with the
objectsof the past. Yet the transposition is not withoutits difficulties,
and Benjamin'sconclusionsremainproblematical,particularlyin his
unresolved,ambiguous attitudetowards modern industrialciviliza-
tion,whirhfascinatedhim as muchas it seemsto have depressedhim.
The problemof propagandain art can be solved,he maintains,by
attention,not so much to the contentof the work of art, as to its
form:a progressive workof artis one whichutilizesthe mostadvanced
artistictechniques,one in which therefore the artistlives his activity
as a technician,and throughthis technicalwork findsa unity of
purposewith the industrialworker."The solidarityof the specialist
with the proletariat. . . con neverbe anythingbut a mediatedone."
This communist"politicalisationof art," which he opposed to the
fascist"estheticalisation of the machine,"was designedto harnessto
the cause of revolutionthatmodernismto whichotherMarxistcritics
(Lukacs, forinstance) were hostile. And therecan be no doubt that
Benjaminfirstcame to a radical politicsthroughhis experienceas a
specialist: throughhis growingawareness,withinthe domain of his
own specializedartisticactivity,of the crucial influenceon the work
of artof changesin the public,in technique,in shortof Historyitself.
But althoughin the realm of the historyof art the historiancan no
doubt show a parallelismbetweenspecifictechnicaladvances in a
given art and the generaldevelopmentof the economyas a whole,
to see how a technicallyadvanced and difficult
it is difficult work of
art can have anythingbut a "mediated" effect politically.Benjamin
was of courseluckyin the artisticexamplewhich lay beforehim: for
he illustrateshis thesiswiththeepic theaterof Brecht,perhapsindeed
68 FREDRIC JAMESON
the only modernartisticinnovationthat has had directand revolu-
tionarypoliticalimpact. But even here the situationis ambiguous:
an astutecritic(Rolf Tiedemann) has pointedout thesecretrelation-
ship betweenBenjamin's fondnessforBrechton the one hand and
"his lifelongfascination
withchildren'sbooks"on theother(children's
books: hieroglyphs: simplifiedallegorical emblems and riddles).
Thus, wherewe thoughttoemergeintothehistoricalpresent,in reality
we plungeagain into the distantpast of psychologicalobsession.
But if nostalgia as a politicalmotivationis most frequentlyasso-
ciated with fascism,thereis no reason why a nostalgiaconsciousof
itself,a lucid and remorselessdissatisfactionwith the presenton the
grounds of some remembered plenitude, cannot furnishas adequate
a revolutionary stimulusas any other: the example of Benjamin is
thereto proveit. He himself,however,preferred to contemplatehis
in
destiny religiousimagery, as in the followingparagraph,according
to GershomScholem the last he ever wrote: "Surely Time was felt
neitheras emptynoras homogeneousby the soothsayers who inquired
forwhat it hid in its womb. Whoever keeps this in mind is in a
positionto graspjusthow past timeis experiencedin commemoration:
in just exactlythe same way. As is well known,the Jewswere for-
bidden to search into the future.On the contrary,the Thora and
the act of prayerinstructthemin commemoration of the past. So for
them,the future,to which the clienteleof soothsayersremains in
thrall,is divestedof its sacred power. Yet it does not for all that
becomesimplyemptyand homogeneous time in theireyes. For every
second of the futurebears within it that little door throughwhich
Messiah may enter."
Angélus novus: Benjamin'sfavoriteimage of the angel that exists
only to sing its hymnof praisebeforethe face of God, to give voice,
and thenat once to vanishback into uncreatednothingness. So at its
mostpoignantBenjamin'sexperienceof time: a pure present,on the
thresholdof the futurehonoringit by avertedeyes in meditationon
the past.